Wind's yellin at us.
Don't worry, she said. Won't hurt if we don't listen.
Sounds angry, like its claws are hungry?
Can't hurt with our eyes shut; nothins real here, long as you don't stare too long.
Dawn is coming.
Flowers rise.
Moons ebb and fade. Like everything.
Cold wind tore words across cold ground
piling light snow in peaks and hollows
scrawling lyrics in fat snowfall and barren streaks.
Everything, nothing.

Fragments 

A lingering scent of last night’s cigarette smoke in my truck reminds me of you.

In college on a Saturday driving on empty winter streets in a summer tourist town. Smoking and talking, you stuffed another butt into the overflowing ashtray.

Oh, one more will fit, you said.

On another day and on another road I knew you were leaving.

You were talking about a friend of a friend and how she colored her hair.

How she hated her stick legs.

How she didn’t eat for a week, you said, because she was mad at you.

A trail of your cigarette smoke slipped out my bedroom window. A cottage on a dirt road near the water. Waves splashing on a frozen beach in February when you said, Let’s see other people.

Did you like her bottle-dyed hair and her stick legs and her bullshit? Because you traded me for them.

I was the last to leave our little rental. I remember coffee in the kitchen with you — chipped Formica, green curtains, and not enough milk.

I remember running out of heating oil in December and washing your long hair. I warmed water on the stove and carried it upstairs. You were naked in a blue tile bathtub.

You left me for a girl with purple hair.

Of Things That Fade And Remain

She was a dahlia at noon

as red as a love poem

facing the sun

he was a midnight stone 

stuck in silence where her shadow grew

---------------

Dreams are funny things.

Monday: I am at once sunk neck-deep in a rain puddle, driving, unaware of my destination, late for work, and alone in what was once a busy bar, so I walked away. 

About that summer flower and sad rock above, what can I do about those two?

A Monday Night

Laughter in my heart is you
Pain in my laughter is you
Dead in dried leaves chasing the breeze, is you.
---------

Where one year goes, another comes.
You played music and sang along, folding warm clothes from the dryer.

I hit my head on the shelf and cried, chopping carrots for your soup.

Did You Hear Something?

I dreamt it wasn’t a dream

i shouted your name

but you were dancing

she swung in your arms

her sugar lips glistened

where yours had been

screw you

--------------

Rain, the forest, and random thoughts:

Seasons drift past. Winter was hell, then spring struggled to break it. Daylight lingered. Warmth at last.

I listened last night to early summer’s faint rain and watched the dogs sleep. It’s true, that she swung in your arms once, and I turned around and poured myself a shot, right there on the edge of jumping into a dark hole where I would forget your name.

Wednesday night’s rain tapped away and again I remember waking, wondering what was real. Coral quince blooms and honeysuckle soaking the air — I believe in these ephemeral things. Like vernal pools and I love yous and puddles caught by the sun, they linger and are lost.

From the crooked horizon rose a hawk, solitary and free. That’s the way things should be. Wild things were rearranging themselves after the timid rainfall. Wood frogs bustled beneath damp leaves.

I thought about an old forgotten cottage boarded up on the forest’s fringes, aching for sunlight. It’s coming. Almost. Soon I’ll tear those boards free. And soon I’ll stop being a bare-minimum girl. I'll throw away these overused clothes in which I stew, growing so sick of myself. For a large part of the last decade I’ve sat at night gorging on books and red wine, getting nowhere but hungover. There is so much more than that.

 

Hello?

My friend
What you have is not whole

Sunrise is blinding and long
Days grow strange without sleep

Winter's ice coats a Christmas tree
Love me?

Life is just a pebble
Throw it

I awake wondering...

Four Dogs On A Free Afternoon

Lemonade light washed over stones

we hiked through a burst of dry falling leaves 

from shadows in a shallow valley i pushed higher

autumn colors played tricks on me

old field stones sat waiting uphill

a home without walls 

just remnants now -- a cast iron stove, old ceramic utensils, and no one anywhere that remembers

the pug stumbles toward me and sits where mossy ground is warm

i tell him, if you want the sun, go up…

and we were up

a high point with horizon all around

wrapped in forest walls where the breeze steals my voice

I have not liked my words much lately, but I remember reading that even bad poetry , for example, is something.

What is creativity? Every day is a story. I remembered the way sunlight rippled on Lily's fur. The other dogs found comfort on soft moss or heat soaked earth where they stretched and sniffed autumn's breeze. Calling to Hershey, my voice vanished in the wind.

Solace on a simple day.

Going to hand out candy later and serve a few beers. 

Closing time -- a gentle neon low light, background blues and a glass of wine.

Solace on a simple night.